


All I Am Is What I Am

by Anonymous



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Getting Together, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Illyria brings Wesley back after the averted apocalypse, and he’s not best pleased about it. Together they set out to find a place in the world where they fit. It’s a long journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, healing, and a fair amount of demon entrails.
Relationships: Illyria & Faith Lehane, Illyria/Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	All I Am Is What I Am

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedibuttercup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).



So far, her return to the world had held very little good for Illyria. The world was diminished from what she remembered, full of ants, lacking magic and wonder and grandiosity. _She_ was diminished – in power, in scope, in followers, but not, unfortunately, in emotions. Those, it seemed, she had even more of, an abundance greater than would seem possible to contain in this limited shell. She pitied the humans, who had not a fraction of her power, and still felt even more strongly. How could they live? How had they thrived to the degree they had? Perhaps it had something to do with their ability to persevere in spite of pain. Wesley had caused himself great pain, being reminded of the woman he loved every time he looked at her, feeling overwhelming, almost crippling grief, to the point he had all but shut down, according to his companions (she had no other experience with which to compare his affect or behavior but trusted their judgement in this, if nothing else), yet he had still voluntarily been her guide. He had sought her out – to the point where he had spent his last day alive with her. He might not have intended to not survive, but he had to have known of the possibility, and instead of trying to seek some last possible modicum of good feeling, he had spent it by her side, taking care of her injuries after her fight with the Wolf, Ram and Hart’s lackey. She hadn’t understood then why he had done it, or just what it had cost him, but now she did. She had not known grief then, but now she did.

She had gotten her wish to do more violence, with the horde of demons descending upon them, and it had sated her while it lasted, but now the fight was over, and the grief made itself known again. It was a feeling she disliked. Strongly.

They were standing in the ashes of what the humans called the City of Angels, the break of day still some hours away, although the darkness called by the Wolf, Ram and Hart had fled with the last of their minions, and the red-headed sorceress had sealed the gate behind them.

Gunn had perished within 10 minutes, just as she had predicted, but he had made them memorable, just as _he_ had predicted. Angel had perished also – his head separated from his body, his body vanished in a cloud of dust. But the minions of the Wolf, Ram and Hart had not been strong enough to defeat her, and her pet half-breed had also survived the encounter. She would never admit it (perhaps she would have, if Wesley had still been alive), but there had been a moment when she had felt doubt about her own survival – when it was the half-breed and her against thousands of demons. No matter how weak they were individually, they could still overpower her, since the Wolf, Ram and Hart had chosen the coward’s approach rather than face her directly. But they had been saved by a large contingent of human girls, stronger and fiercer than humans had any right to be, who had turned the tides of battle and beaten them back, accompanied by a powerful sorceress, who had driven them from this dimension.

The fall of the Wolf, the Ram, the Hart had cleared the air, and there was less darkness, both literal and metaphorical, in the air. They had been sealed away, locked in their own dimension, not unlike Illyria herself had been locked in the Deeper Well eons ago. And Illyria felt her body expand, her demon essence expanding with it, soaking in the magic that had been released in this alley on this night. She felt her powers grow and instinctively reached out to the fabric of time around her, and slowed it down. Only for a brief second, and she did not move at all during it, for though she wished to know that she could do this again, she did not want these Slayers or her half-breed to know that her powers were on the return. They might make another Mutari generator and attempt to strip her of her powers again.

The shell, she thought, had always been capable of this expansion, but the Wolf, the Ram, the Hart had blocked it. Yet another thing to lay at their feet, another reason to rain down vengeance around their heads, these vermin who had taken over the demonic influence after the God-Kings fell – except she was as cut off from their hell dimension as they were from this one.

The path was now wide open for Illyria to conquer the world again – she had her powers (not her full powers as she’d had at the height of her power, but still more than the fragment she had been left with after Wesley had shot her with his invention), and her shell could now contain them. There was no major demonic force to stop her, and these so-called “Slayers” were weary, tired after the battle, and their guard was down. Illyria had just been released from a contract that still bound her shell, even after the soul that signed it was gone, and she was stronger than she had been before. She could defeat them. She could stop time, escape them and mount an attack on the world, or she could start her attack with them, beat them down, and take over. She could rule the planet again, as was meant to be. She took one step forward, and then, she saw a face in her mind. He had short, sharp hair on his chin, dark patches splotched underneath his eyes, weary lines set around his mouth, and when he looked at her, his eyes were shadowed. Wesley would be disappointed if she set out to conquer, after all his lessons about living in this new world. Well, Wesley was dead, so he didn’t get a say. She would conquer and destroy, starting with her half-breed pet, who had found so much joy in trying to beat her and being beaten up by her. She would give him more of that joy, until he joined Gunn and Angel. Until he joined Wesley. For what reason did she have to keep him alive?

Yet time did not stop around her. Her feet did not move in his direction.

He was currently engaged in a loud argument with the blonde little girl who seemed to be some kind of leader of the Slayers (she did not look like much, but neither did Illyria in this form, and Illyria had seen the precision and force with which the girl wielded her two-headed ax, and felt a reluctant admiration for her as a warrior). The girl was angry because the half-breed had not told her that he was not dead, and because he had not asked for her help with the apocalypse. He tried to argue that they had asked for help, several times, and been refused, and that many people in her organisation had known of his survival.

Illyria’s sympathies were more with the leader, whose name she thought was Buffy, and wondered idly if that was short for something; humans didn’t seem to be able to respect other people’s names, but kept shortening them or giving them seemingly unrelated names. She thought her sympathies would probably turn the moment it seemed the leader would actually threaten her half-breed pet, but so far, it didn’t seem like it: she was far too busy shouting, and he was shouting back. This new crop of humans had no respect for their leaders. At first, she had thought that it was Angel, had thought that he allowed his subordinates to question him and sometimes even outright disobey him because he was weak, but now it seemed this girl was the same way, and none of the girls who were following her seemed to have respect for her authority. How had they managed to rise to prominence on this planet if all their leaders were so weak?

Did she actually want the worship of these people? It had been nice to feel the worship of her Qwa Ha Xahn, but he had been killed, and Wesley had been so much more interesting that the weak Knox, even though he had not worshiped her at all.

What had being worshiped actually given her? Nothing. At least, nothing compared to one measly human who had stood up and matched her in stubbornness, despite the fact that she had killed the woman he loved, despite the fact that she could kill him without expending more effort than it took for him to walk, despite the fact that the mere act of looking at her caused him pain. No, she would not conquer. Wesley would not want it, and even though he was dead, she still respected his memory, as strange as it would seem that _she_ should respect one of _them_.

But that left her with an open question. What should she do now? How would she go on? The one place where she could have made her home was gone, and the people she had aligned herself with were all gone, either dead or scattered. There was no leader, no guide, no heart and no song. Just her and the half-breed. She knew now how Wesley felt when he had been grieving, empty, the one point of light in the world gone. It was a feeling she had never felt before – she had not cared for anyone but herself, and if she had been upset at the deaths of others, it had been because those deaths had been inconvenient to her. But Wesley’s death was so much more than inconvenient – it was a knife between her ribs, it was a blow hard enough to knock her down. The shell – Fred, he didn’t like it when she called it the shell – had contaminated her.

But she was a God-King of the Primordium. She had powers the Wolf, Ram and Hart could only dream of, even diminished as she was. She couldn’t bring back to life those who were dead, that had never been one of her powers, but she could go back in time, and snatch Wesley the moment before the breath left his body, and bring him to her, here and now, where his life could be saved. She had no powers to heal, to preserve mortal life. That had always been beyond her domain. But there were others here who could.

She found herself in Cyvus Vail’s manor, watching herself cradling the unconscious Wesley in her arms, still lying to him and pretending to be the woman he loved to make him feel better as he died, even though he was too far down the path to death to be aware of what she was doing. She’d even made Fred’s face cry. It was a pathetic sight. The Illyria on the floor looked up, and their eyes met. Illyria on the floor knew what she was doing, why she was here, and gave her a nod. Illyria took Wesley in her arms, with a gentleness she had never used on anything before. Illyria on the floor stood up, narrowed her eyes and flared her nostrils, and then stalked off to do more violence against those who had dared bring about Wesley’s death. Illyria looked down at the almost dead body she was carrying, pulled time tight around her, and then she was standing in the alley after the battle.

It took a moment for anyone to realize she had gone, and that she was now carrying Wesley.

“I need assistance,” she said, and immediately five girls came running up to her, shouting over each other unhelpfully.

“Oh my god, is that Wesley?” “What happened to him?” “Is he dead?” “Where did he come from?” “What did you do?” “What did this?” “How did you do that?”

“Find me the red-headed sorceress,” she ordered, cutting through their meaningless yaps as Wesley’s life faded away. “She is the most powerful among you. She can heal wounds.”

Three of them set off immediately to do so. Apparently humans could follow orders, when it suited them. It seemed like eons (and Illyria knew eons) before the red-headed sorceress was found, but Wesley was stubborn, he was still clinging to life.

“What happened? I thought you said he was dead?” she asked.

“These questions waste time,” Illyria said. “You will heal him, before he dies.”

The red-headed sorceress nodded.

“Of course I'll help him. Lay him down, so I can try.”

“You will do more than try,” Illyria said.

“I'll do my best, but healing's tricky. There's no guarantee it'll work.”

She suspected she wasn't going to get any more out of the sorceress, and she did not want to waste time by continuing to argue with her. Illyria sat down, cradling his head in her lap, like the Illyria on the floor had done. The sorceress’s hands glowed white, and the wound in Wesley’s stomach knitted itself together again, the blood drawing back into his body, and his chest rose and fell with more determination.

“Will you explain now?” the older man, who seemed like he fulfilled the same role for Buffy as Wesley had for Angel – to give her advice, to question her, to be her keeper of knowledge and lore. He had the same way of treating Illyria as Wesley had in the beginning, making suggestions rather than demands, deferring to her as a way of making her do what he wanted, although his interactions with her was tinged by a tint of fear, whereas Wesley had been beyond such things – he had not cared if she killed him, and that had made him fearless. She much preferred Wesley to this other one. “Where did you get Wesley, and how can he still be alive if he’s in that state?”

She did not have to explain herself to the likes of them, they were so far beneath her, but it was somewhat galling that they didn’t seem to realize that. They had no notion of how far beneath her they were.

“I took him, moments before his death, and brought him here,” she explained, not because they had asked, but so that they would know of her power and thus know to fear her appropriately. She didn’t want to get into the specifics, for then they would come up with a way to stop her, they would fear her powers so much they wanted to strip them, as Angel had done. It was a delicate balance, and Illyria was not used to having to walk it – as God-King she had never feared letting the true extent of her powers be known, for all it meant was that people feared and worshiped her all the more.

“Can you do that to others?” the red-headed sorceress asked. “Take them here as well, so I can heal them?”

“No. Just Wesley.”

“Why him?” the not-Wesley guide asked.

Did they truly dare question her? Humans had grown truly impertinent in the time she was gone – but she knew that already. She was holding the prime example of that, watching his chest rise and fall.

“Because he matters.”

“So do lots of people,” the sorceress objected.

Illyria was unused to having to explain herself, but she was coming to realize that she couldn’t just give orders and have them obeyed in the new world order. Not without causing damage that would also hurt Wesley, because he, for some inexplicable reason, cared about the ants of this world. Perhaps he even cared about these particular ants, since they seemed to know him.

“Because I saw his eyes close, I heard his last heartbeat and I felt the breath leave his body for the last time. Because I held him as he died. I know the exact second of his death, and can take him and freeze him in time just before then, so I do not steal time from his past. That’s the only way this can work.”

Even God-Kings needed to obey the rules of magic, to her great frustration. Otherwise she could have saved Gunn and Angel, too. Not because she cared much for them, but having them around had not been displeasing to her. And their deaths would make Wesley sad and make him stink of grief again. And their survival would spite the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart, who needed to be put back in their place. She was content to leave the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart sealed into their Hell dimension for now, but in a few centuries or millennia, when the seal was broken, she would be there, and she would wreak vengeance on them.

She was still cradling him, but she had not taken on the lie. When he woke up, he would see her as she was. He was no longer dying, so there was no need to lie to him – he had, after all, always preferred the truth to the illusion, and it bothered him when she took on the appearance of Fred. She would honor his wishes in this.

His eyes opened and for a moment his eyes filled with warmth, before reality set in, and they grew shaded again.

“Illyria,” he said in a flat tone that held none of the affection he’d had when he talked to her in the guise of Fred. “Where am I?”

“You are in the place of the battle. We won.”

She thought he might like to know that – it seemed important.

“I should be dead,” he said.

“I brought you back,” she explained. “And the sorceress healed you.”

She gestured at the red-head, who was half a step back, looking at them with concern.

“You shouldn’t have,” he said.

This displeased her. She didn’t know exactly what she had expected. She hadn’t thought he’d be happy to see her, she had enough wits to know that he probably wouldn’t be, but it still felt bad that he wasn’t. Like she had been building up to something, and it had deflated.

They took some time, patched themselves together, cleaned up the worst of the battle in case any civilians came stumbling by, and then it was time to decide what to do next, and that’s when they hit their first snag. She had assumed that she, Wesley and Spike would head off to set up a smaller but similar operation to the one they’d had before, but Spike seemed to assume he was going to go with the blonde girl, once they’d shouted themselves out at each other, and talked fondly of getting the band back together with the group called the Scoobies, which he seemed to consider himself part of, but the dark-haired human male with only one eye (Illyria still hadn’t worked out what that one was supposed to be good for) seemed to think he very much was _not_ part of. But her half-breed wished to leave her, and that was unacceptable. He was _hers_.

“Spike can do as he wishes, Illyria,” Wesley said wearily. “He’s free to make his own choices.”

She did not like that at all.

“Then I shall remove his other choices but me,” she threatened.

Immediately, the girls went into fighting stances and weapons came out. She was fairly confident about her chances – they had the numerical advantage, true, but only Spike and Wesley knew the true extent of her abilities, and they might not know the extent to which they had returned and grown after the Wolf, Ram and Hart’s influence over this dimension had been removed. And she was fairly sure Wesley wouldn’t fight her – especially if she made herself look like Fred. He might never speak to her again, however, which made that an option only to be used in the most dire of circumstances – perhaps not even then.

“Sister, you may be pure demon, but my kind, our kind,” the brown-haired woman said, gesturing to the girls around her, “we were made to fight things like you.”

She held some sort of position of authority in the group, beneath the blonde leader but above the other girls, but Illyria had not quite worked out what it was – lieutenant? Second in command? Advisor?

“Plus, you wouldn’t be the first God I’ve killed,” the blonde leader said, flipping her hair. Bold words for one so small. There was a tense moment when the choice was up to Illyria, and they were waiting to see if she would attack them. She could do more violence, if she wanted to, but these were allies. They had fought beside each other mere hours ago.

“I do not wish to fight you,” she said, and the weapons disappeared. The blonde girl looked triumphant, and Illyria did not wish to let the misconception stand that she was _afraid_ of this slip of a girl, for she was not. “You are beneath me,” she explained. It would also upset Wesley, but that was not a reason she could give to these people.

The two women leaders exchanged glances bur said nothing, no doubt because the saw the true might of Illyria’s power and did not wish to take it on.

Spike left them to join the girls, which seemed to make some of the girls uneasy. Humans seemed no fonder of half-breeds than demons, it seemed, which was somewhat upside down to Illyria – they ought to look up to half-breeds, who were closer to true demon-hood than they were. But perhaps it was different for these Slayers. Perhaps ordinary humans worshiped demons and looked up to half-breeds. She had only Wesley’s word to go on that it was not so, but she felt confident that Wesley would not lie to her.

The old man who seemed to be their Wesley turned to her Wesley.

“There’s a place for you with us, as well, if you want it.”

Wesley grimaced.

“That didn’t go so well last time,” he said, glancing at the brown-haired lieutenant they called Faith, the one who had issued the challenge against Illyria. Perhaps, if he was not so fond of her, he would not have objected if Illyria killed her after all? Perhaps she could still have attacked? But no, she dismissed the thought. Even if he did not care for this particular one, he still with all likelihood cared for others in the group, and for the concept of Slayers in general.

“We’ve all changed,” said the old man. “Including you.”

“Still. Better not.”

“Well, the offer’s open if you change your mind.”

“Thank you.”

They shook hands, and that was that. It was just her and Wesley.

“What do we do now?” Illyria asked.

“Now we continue the fight,” Wesley said. It was the only real option Illyria had considered, yet the answer sat uneasily with her.

“You are leaderless,” she said. “It has already claimed your life once. You have no wish to continue.”

“I have no particular wish to do anything,” he replied. “But it needs doing.”

“I do not like this.”

“You don’t have to join me.”

“That is not what I mean. I dislike this course of action for you.”

“You have no say in what I do.”

“Then I will go with you,” she decided, as if there had been another option.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Will doing this, continuing the fight, give you back your will to live?” she asked.

“No. There is only one thing that could do that, and it’s impossible.”

Illyria said nothing. She was the one who had made it impossible.

*

They moved around a lot. Neither of them had any place they were particularly strongly bound to. Wesley originated from across the sea, halfway round the world from Illyria’s old domain, in a part of the world she knew little of, but when she raised the possibility of going back there, he had shut down pretty hard, and she had struggled to get a more than monosyllabic answers out of him for the rest of the day. So that suggestion was put aside, and they roamed the continent that they had found themselves on. But not all of it, for the humans had placed arbitrary boundaries on where Wesley was allowed to operate, and had divided territories among them, just like she and her fellow Old Ones had done. And they seemed just as keen to defend their territories as the Old Ones had been.

They found Lorne in a new demon bar in Cleveland. They were chasing a gang of child-stealing demons, and had thought to hit the bars for more information. They weren’t looking for Lorne – he had told Angel he wouldn’t be found, but Illyria did not think it was so difficult. Cleveland was the place to start looking if you wished to find a demon, they had a Hellmouth there. There was also a branch of the Council there, but the city was big enough for two groups of demon hunters, especially if one of them was only passing through. The dark-haired Slayer was in charge of this location – Illyria was still not entirely clear on her position in the hierarchy, but she did know that she and Wesley had a shared history, and not all of it good.

“No,” Lorne said, as soon as they saw them. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you alive and healthy, but I told Angel, I’m out. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Angel’s dead,” Wesley said.

Lorne’s face fell.

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, especially at the end, but I liked him.”

“I know,” Wesley said. “Does that change your decision? Are you able to work with me and Illyria?”

Lorne’s eyes widened and she knew he noticed the two other names left out of that sentence. He knew that Angel was dead, and that Gunn and Spike would not be joining them. Perhaps he thought they were both dead, perhaps he thought they were also retired. It did not matter – either way, they were gone.

“Oh, sweetcheeks, I wish I could, but I can’t. That kind of life… it destroys you.”

“Yes,” said Wesley. “It does.”

“I don’t suppose you have any thoughts of getting out yourself? Take this opportunity to start over again? Do something else with your life that doesn’t destroy you?”

“None whatsoever.”

Neither of them said anything for a while.

“Well, I wish you the best,” said Lorne. “And who knows, maybe someday in the future we’ll see each other again. You take care of yourselves, and each other.”

“Yes. You too.”

The left the bar.

“Do you think he meant it?” Illyria asked. “About being done?”

Wesley sighed.

“I don’t know. I hope he does. It sucks you in, this life. But he’s right, it destroys you.”

“If it destroys you, why don’t you leave it?”

“It’s too late for me. There’s nothing left of me that hasn’t already been destroyed.”

They went to the Council in for help, because it made sense to join forces and not waste resources. Wesley got to spend a full day in their library, researching whatever these child-stealers were, and then they headed out to take them down. They had made their lair in a basement below a suburban house, a little white house among a row of identical little white houses. There were thirteen demons to Wesley, Illyria, and three Slayers which almost made it a fair fight – except, of course, that Illyria could probably take on all thirteen single-handed and still win if she had to, so it was not a fair fight at all.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a Watcher in Cleveland,” Wesley commented, firing two bullets into one of them and watching it go down, “since it’s an active Hellmouth.”

The dark-haired leader shrugged and kicked one of them in the stomach, lining it up for another Slayer to drive her sword through its heart.

“Watchers are a bit thin on the ground lately, compared to the number of Slayers we have, and we do all right with Robin. Plus, Giles helps out when we run into trouble.”

She put an axe through the forehead of another demon, and black goo spurted out.

“Why, you interested in the job? It doesn’t have to be here, if you think that’ll be awkward. Giles is worried about you.”

Wesley dodged a set of claws and took a step back to shoot it, but before he had the chance, Illyria swooped in to kill it. She’d been holding back a bit, reveling in the joy of the fight, not wanting to end it too early, but it was far too close to Wesley, and therefore had to die.

“There’s no need to worry about me,” Wesley said, flashing Illyria a quick nod in thanks. “You’ve seen me, you can report back that I’m fine.”

“You’re not actually fine, Wes.” The Slayer made “come hither” gestures at one of the demons and grinned when it charged at her.

“Since when do you care about my well-being?” Wesley asked, wiping some demon entrails off his face.

“Since you sprung me from jail and gave my life purpose again,” she said, and made a face at the goo she was now splattered with. “But no more talk of feelings, it’s giving me hives.”

“Noted.”

They left Cleveland not long after. The Slayer saw them off.

“You’re good people, Wes,” she said before they left.

“You know, Faith,” said Wesley, “I think you might be, too.”

They shook hands, and Illyria contained the urge to tear the Slayer’s hands off. She reminded herself that Wesley was allowed to have other friends, as long as he remembered he was _hers_.

*

Wesley and she made a good team. Wesley determined which cases they would take on, figured out whom to go after and what to do, and researched things when he didn’t already know them. Illyria flung people into walls, tore their internal organs out, and caved their skulls in. Although the Wolf, Ram and Hart had been sealed away, there were plenty demons left who needed killing, and Illyria was happy to step up to the task – if she couldn’t be worshiped, she could be feared, and although not many people had heard of her, they only had to see what she could do before they feared her. The life satisfied Illyria, and she would happily continue forever, but Wesley needed more. He was itchy, and restless in a way he hadn’t been at the offices in Angel’s City.

“What do you want from me?” he asked, tumbler of whiskey in hand. Illyria wasn’t sure what normal human capacity for the substance was, but she was sure he was exceeding it regularly. She had tried it once and disliked it. Apparently it dulled pain and other senses, and depending on you asked, made things pleasantly hazy, but she had not felt any such effects. It only tasted bitter. “You don’t need a guide any more. You understand humanity fine, your little play of impersonating Fred showed that.”

“You think I don’t need a guide?” Illyria asked.

“I know you don’t.”

“You are very dense,” she told him.

He clenched his jaw and tossed the liquid back his throat.

“What do you want from me?” he asked again. His diction was not quite as clear as it usually was. “Why did you bring me back? I’m nothing to you. I rank slightly above amusing vermin on your scale. What good can I possibly do for you? What good can you do for me?”

“You are more than vermin to me,” Illyria said. “I came to you when you were dying, out of concern for you. Is that not a sign that I care?”

He opened his mouth, no doubt to say something tiresome like that she shouldn’t have bothered.

“Be quiet,” she told him. “I grow weary of this conversation.”

He shut his mouth.

“What is our next case?” she asked. He took out a stack of newspapers where he had circled reports of strange lights in the dark leading people to their deaths of a cliff.

They were in yet another cheap motel room, with twin beds. Illyria could not quite understand that she put up with it – the lawyer’s offices were far below the standards she had been used to, but at least they had style and comfort, two things this endless repetition of identical rooms in different locations lacked. The lawyer’s offices had also been safe from attack (more or less). Wesley put out a _Home, sweet home_ welcome mat and said something along the lines of this being home for the next few days whenever they “checked in” – because that was something they had to do, register their presence and hand over payment, when they should have been announced and showered in gifts.

“Does doing that actually keep the half-breeds out?” she wondered.

“Only the very weak ones,” he said.

“Then why do it?”

“Because at least it keeps the very weak ones out.”

There were also some issues to be worked around, mainly due to there being only two of them, and that Wesley was human and didn’t have the strength or stamina she did. He did very well on ranged weapons, but he was vulnerable in close quarters, and she had to spend at least some of her awareness making sure he was not perishing. But she kept underestimating him. Humans were weak, and squishy, but they kept going anyway, and that’s what made them dangerous.

Wesley challenged her, he always had. He pushed her and argued with her. He didn’t worship her. She’d had enough of worship. It got old, after centuries, and although she hadn’t realised it at the time, had allowed her to get complacent, comfortable. Now each day brought something new, and the sense of danger made things more thrilling. It helped that Fred’s body had a much more active adrenaline system than her demon form. Her new smallness let her discover the truth of the universe more easily.

There were also benefits in their world being so small, relegated to just each other and nobody else. It meant that they relied on each other more, and Wesley shared his thoughts and feelings with her in a way he probably wouldn’t have, otherwise.

“You are sad because Angel is dead,” she told him one night in yet another anonymous motel, somewhere in the middle of the continent. She thought she could tell the difference now, between when he was sad because Fred was dead, and when he was sad because Angel was dead. The grief for Angel was strong, but not as overwhelming, and it wasn’t pure grief: there was guilt, and anger, and a bit of resentment mixed in with it as well. For Fred, it was just pure, unadulterated grief.

“I miss Angel, of course,” he said, drinking his nightly ration of whiskey. “But I think mostly right now I’m sad because Gunn is dead. He was my best friend, you know.”

This surprised Illyria – she hadn’t detected any particular warmth between them when he was alive.

“He was your best friend, but you stabbed him?” she asked, to make sure.

He quirked his lips wryly.

“I did. And even before that, we’d grown distant. Too many betrayals on both sides. Too much hurt. I never got the chance to make it right. I didn’t even know there was something I needed to make right, not before I broke that Orlon window. But I never got the change to mend our relationship. I never got the chance to tell him he was still my best friend.”

He paused, and she didn’t know what to say in response to this. She’d never had friends before – allies, yes, and worshipers, but there had been nobody whose death would have caused her grief. Nobody until Wesley.

“It’s quite depressing, actually,” he continued, voice devoid of emotion, staring into the glass. “My best friend is the person I stabbed once. I’m not quite sure what that says about me.”

“It says you have the heart of a warrior,” Illyria said, because this at least, she knew. “It says you do what needs to be done. It says you are not squeamish.”

“Does it say I’m a psychopath?”

“That word means nothing to me,” she said.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t, would it?” he asked, and she wanted to ask what he meant by that, but she also suspected she wouldn’t like the answer, so she didn’t.

She took him to the rooftop of another cheap motel on the outskirts of yet another city glimmering beneath them in reds and oranges.

“Do you remember what you said, when you took me to that rooftop for the first time and showed me the city lights blinking far beneath us?” she asked. She wondered if that memory was seared in his memory as it was in hers. She hadn’t felt it until long afterwards, but that was the moment she had started to make peace with who she was and what she had become.

“I said that the walls don’t press in as hard when you can’t see them,” Wesley replied. He did remember. She wasn’t sure why that made her triumphant, and was glad Wesley couldn’t taste her feelings the way she could taste his.

“I was still processing being so diminished from what I was,” she said. He gave her a glance, and she could taste the incredulity on him, and she could almost hear him bite back a comment asking if she had stopped processing. “I said ‘all I am is what I am’.”

“You did.”

“That applies to you too. I meant it differently when I spoke of myself, but with you there are no mirrors, no lies, no deceit. All you are is what you are.”

“You asked why we box ourselves in rooms even smaller when our world is so small,” Wesley said, rather than addressing her comment. She decided to let him get away with it.

“I said you were weak, and you agreed. You are weak. Sometimes being weak is the bravest thing someone can be.”

Wesley, going to Cyvus Vail even though he was hopelessly outclassed. Gunn, arriving in the alley with an ax and a fatal stomach wound.

“Look at the world of humans, Wesley,” she said. “See how you persevere, build, overcome your weakness. Look at what you’re protecting.”

They stood in silence for a good long while. She wasn’t sure what she smelt on him, aside from whiskey, his thoughts and feelings were in such a confused jumble that she couldn’t make out any particular feeling. There was grief, always grief, but also resignation, determination, and a tiny, tiny hint of hope. Perhaps she was getting through to him. It would take time, of course, just as her acclimation had taken time, but maybe, eventually, he would regain the will to live.

If Illyria from the past could see her now, she would scoff and probably kill her in one sweep to wipe away all evidence of her weakness, but Illyria was not her past self, and she had accepted that she cared about Wesley. His wellbeing was a concern of hers, perhaps even above her own, since he was so much more fragile than she was. She had never cared for another to that extent before. It was frightening, but also comforting.

She didn’t mind that he didn’t speak. They stood, side by side in comfortable silence.

Eventually Wesley turned to leave, and she made to follow. Before he went back in through the fire exit door, he turned to look one last time at the skyline.

“Thank you, Illyria,” he said, almost too quietly to hear.

*

An unavoidable aspect of this calling of theirs, was of course that they found themselves in danger from time to time, facing injuries and threats of injuries. Not Illyria, few things could injure her, not now the influence of the Wolf, Ram and Hart had been curtailed, but Wesley was very breakable.

“You are careless with your life,” she said. “You do not value it.”

He looked at her.

“Is that meant as censure or an observation?” he asked. “Do you care how I value my life?”

“I will kill anyone who takes you from me,” she informed him, and he flinched.

“You don’t own me,” he said. “I’m not your possession.”

That wasn’t what she meant, but she lacked the words to express what she _did_ mean. That hadn’t happened before, and was highly frustrating.

“You should take better care of your life,” was all she said.

He didn’t say anything, neither to agree nor deny, which she took to mean he would not. Well, that just meant she would have to cover for him. She wished for their old companions back. Without them to cover more angles and be her backup, they were more vulnerable. _Wesley_ was more vulnerable. Illyria could deal with most threats, but all it took was one demon or half-breed or even human who slipped through her defenses, and that would be that.

They had the option of finding other humans. The so-called Council had offered them a standing invite, and while she could not imagine him working together with the blonde leader, the brown-haired second-in-command had shown a willingness to work with Wesley and her, and that one job they’d done had shown they worked well together. But he didn’t want to be around other humans at the moment, which suited Illyria just fine. She didn’t want to share him.

Did she love Wesley? She had never known love, didn’t know how to recognize it in herself. Humans seemed not to agree what love was or what it felt like, but the thought of anything happening to him was highly displeasing to her. She had felt grief when he was dead, and joy when he was brought back to life. She wanted him to remain with her. She felt jealousy and possessiveness when he was with others. She wanted him to be happy. She supposed that was close enough.

“You are not happy,” she said to him in yet another motel room. “What makes you happy?”

“I don’t think I have it in me to be happy,” he said. “Not after everything.”

This answer was unacceptable to her. She set out to find out what made humans happy. She asked in every motel they were staying at, staff and other guests – she tried to be discreet so Wesley wouldn’t realize what she was doing, but of course he found out, and she sensed a muted amusement from him. Since this was closer to happy than she had ever felt him, she continued asking.

The answers she got ranged from money, although opinions differed on that, to fame, although she couldn’t see that making Wesley happy, to children, which she really could not see Wesley wanting at the moment, to other humans, and the one that kept coming up again, and again: love. But she had killed the woman he loved. Not intentionally, and she had not known what she was doing at the time, and had not known what she had cost him for a long time, but she had still done it. So, he couldn’t have love – he could have hers, but he couldn’t return it. That pained her, but her pain was inconsequential to Wesley’s happiness, and she realized that she put his happiness above her own in her list of priorities. So he couldn’t love her. He could still have other humans to love and be loved by. She would have to learn to share. She would rather share him happy than have him to herself miserable.

How did one go about getting other humans? She knew enough to know that kidnapping was bad. One couldn’t force other humans to do things against their will, an annoying principle the humans had invented in the time she was gone. Besides, it was impossible to force love, something that had been true even in her time. Illyria had been happy to receive fear and worship instead of love, but she had a feeling Wesley would not be.

She did not have many humans beside Wesley, but she had a few. There were Lorne and Spike, who had once been her companions in arms, and the girls who called themselves Slayers, who were meant to be her enemies, placed on the Earth to fight demons like her, but who had not attacked her, and she had not killed a single one of them yet. Spike had gone to a place called England with the blonde leader girl, but there were others in Cleveland, so she supposed it was worth nudging Wesley in that direction, hoping he would take the hint and seek out other humans. In Cleveland there was Faith, who could be a new companion in arms, and Lorne, who was one of theirs, even if he did not want to be.

She suggested they go to Cleveland. Wesley insisted that they were only there for a short visit, that they would do their business in Cleveland and then move on. She did not argue – that was an issue for when she was there. She might even have allies in Cleveland, urging him to stay.

Lorne did not disappoint. Illyria had never been adept at manipulation, of getting people to do as she wished without ordering them to, but she drew Lorne aside, and told him that she wanted Wesley to stay among other humans who at least would pretend to care about him, unlike every other human they met on their travels in the cheap motels and cheap diners. That she did not think he was happy, and that companionship might make him less unhappy.

“You leave it with me, honey,” he said. He felt sympathy and almost pity for her, which made her growl. She was not pitiful, in any way. She didn’t understand why he felt that way, and that unsettled her.

“It is good to see you,” Lorne said to Wesley, offering him a drink. “On the house. You’re off gallivanting all over the place, don’t you ever get tired? I feel I don’t see you nearly enough.”

“I thought you wanted nothing more to do with Angel Investigations,” Wesley said, sipping the whiskey and making a satisfied face.

“I can still miss _you_. I wish you’d settle down here.”

Wesley gave a short laugh.

“You’re about the only person who wishes that.”

“I too wish that,” said Illyria. “This place is crawling with demons, there is no shortage of work. And there are allies here.”

Wesley looked at her, surprised.

“I thought you didn’t care about such things.”

“Allies can be useful,” she allowed, forcing the words past her lips. She’d already downed the brightly colored drink Lorne had offered her, which was surprisingly pleasing, although she did not know what the little umbrella was meant to protect against, especially since it formed a very poor protection that left most of the drink uncovered.

“Working with the Council can be your second chance,” Lorne said.

“I don’t believe in those,” Wesley said. “And even if I did, I burned through mine a long time ago.”

“What would Angel say to that?” Lorne chided. “If I recall, he was a big believer in second chances.”

“Angel was a sentimental fool. And he’s dead.”

“But you’re alive,” Lorne said, and added under his breath, so that she could hear him but doubted Wesley could: “even if you seem to be doing your best to change that.”

“Yes, I suppose I am, aren’t I?” Wesley said. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he also didn’t sound as bitter as he had been in the past.

He downed his whiskey and put the glass on the bar.

“Thanks, Lorne. It was good to see you too.”

She didn’t want to betray her nervousness that it might not have worked, but as she followed Wesley along the streets of Cleveland, it seemed they were heading towards the Council’s offices.

“I won’t be a Watcher,” Wesley told the dark-haired woman who was in charge of this particular location. “I don’t think I have it in me, not after last time. I’m not cut out to be one, I think.”

The woman looked at Wesley. Illyria supposed that if they were to be working together, she ought to make an effort to remember her name. It was one of those human names that embodied one of the virtues they strove for. Hope, Love, Peace, Compassion, or something like that. None of those felt right, but it was one of the weak, wishy-washy ones. Illyria had noted it, because it didn’t seem to fit the woman who carried it, who was very much not weak or wishy-washy.

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. Of all the Watchers I’ve had, you’re nowhere near the worst,” Kindness said. “Not your fault I went crazy.”

Wesley twisted his lips, but didn’t respond to that statement.

“If you can take me on those terms, I’m in,” he said instead.

Her eyes widened fractionally.

“Seriously? You’re in? Joining the Council?”

“Yes. With the caveats I just mentioned.”

“Well, then. Welcome to the madhouse,” Gratitude said, and slid a document over, which he read very carefully, twice over, before he signed.

And that was that. Wesley was an official member of the Watcher’s Council, and Illyria was there because everyone accepted she and Wesley came as a package deal.

She got on surprisingly well with the young girls who called themselves Slayers, in that she ignored them and they ignored her, unless they were training or fighting together. She had no understanding of their petty lives and concerns, and they seemed equally uncomprehending of her approach to the world.

And they got to see Spike again. Apparently, there was a fairly regular amount of travel between the various Council locations, both via teleportation and via the very slow human means of travel, so that the organisation would not become divided into “silos”, whatever they were.

Illyria remembered how he had taken her out of the premises and let her hunt demons, back when nobody trusted her, how he had been the first to volunteer to train with her, and the glee with which he approached their bouts. She had felt something lacking, in the past few months when she had not had his company. But he had left her, so since he clearly did not want to be with him, she pointedly ignored his presence. She would not grace him with what he so clearly did not appreciate.

He cornered her outside the practice rooms one day as she was coming out from having beaten Faith up quite badly, although the Slayer said she enjoyed it as it honed her skills. Illyria did not think about how Spike had said almost the same thing.

“Look, I’m sorry I left you, stop giving me the bloody silent treatment, all right?” he said.

She did not reply, and took a step to the side to go around him. She could go straight through, of course, and she was reserving that for if he annoyed her further.

“It wasn’t about you,” he said, abruptly. “It was about Buffy, and making things right with her. About making up for the hurt I’d caused her. I’m sorry if I hurt you, too.”

He seemed sincere. It was harder to read emotions of half-breeds than mortals, but she thought she knew Spike well enough to know that he did not prevaricate with his companions.

“What you do and who you associate with is immaterial to me,” she said, to assure him that he had not, in fact hurt her, and that he was stupid for having thought he did. She was not as weak as that.

“Right. That’s me told, then,” he said, and did not seem as comforted as she had intended.

“But I will be happy to beat you up again, since you seem to have missed it,” she said. If he did not accept that peace offering, she would give up entirely.

His eyes lit up.

“What makes you think you’ll win? Maybe this time I’ll be the one beating _you_ up,” he said, although of course they both knew there was absolutely no question of that, and that his words were just false bravado. In order to demonstrate that, she shot her hand forward and flung him into the wall. He grinned at her.

*

Spike was good for Wesley – he was straightforward, and took blatant joy in their life’s work of making the Earth safer from demons, and he was also visibly happy to be working with them again.

“It’s like getting the band back together again,” he said, dodging a blow from one demon and sending another to Illyria to beat up.

“I thought you said that about the Scoobies,” Wesley said, shooting the demon that was about to ram a stake in Spike’s heart. Since when did demons come equipped with stakes?

“I can have more than one band,” Spike said. “This one’s my favorite. Less navel-gazing and more ass-kicking.”

Wesley smirked slightly.

“And what does Buffy say about that?”

“She doesn’t know,” Spike said. “If you tell her I’ll say you’re lying.”

The young Slayers seemed to think that Wesley was “cool”, which had nothing to do with temperature but was a compliment. The older Slayers, specifically Faith, the leader of the entire organisation (Buffy, her name was Buffy), and Willow, the red-headed sorceress who brought Wesley back (Illyria had never had trouble remembering _her_ name since that event) thought that was hilarious, and told Illyria about what he had been like when they first met. Illyria struggled to reconcile the bumbling coward they spoke of with the hard, pragmatic and ruthless man she knew. But they were all appreciative of how he had changed. Faith, especially, complimented him on his pain tolerance, and that he had broken her out of her prison when he needed her, even after she had tortured him. Illyria had to work not to get defensive at this story – humans were very contradictory about their attitudes towards hurting each other. They said it was bad, that humans didn’t hurt their friends, and that she overreacted when she got the impulse to lash out at them, but then Wesley had stabbed Gunn and seemed unconcerned about it, Faith talked openly about torturing Wesley and about the multiple occasions she and Buffy had tried to kill each other, and Angel had once tried to suffocate Wesley when he was injured and unable to fight back. She asked Faith about it once, and got a shrug in reply.

“What’s a bit of attempted murder between friends?” she said nonchalantly. Then she turned serious. “Look, our lives are messed up, man. We live surrounded by all this violence, and pain, and fear, and all this pressure that if we get something wrong the world might end. Sometimes, some of us… snap, and it’s up to the rest to rein us back in again. Angel did it for me, Xander did it for Willow. Wesley seems to have done it for himself, which, mad respect. We try not to get judgmental about it, as long as that person doesn’t keep going off at the deep end. Some of us do better than others – both at not being judgmental and about not going crazy.”

Illyria wasn’t quite sure she completely understood, but she supposed that was the best answer she was going to get. She had the feeling that no matter how long Faith kept talking, she wouldn’t be able to explain so Illyria understood, because Illyria had never been a human fighting against all these so much more powerful foes. The closest she had come was the Wolf, Ram and Hart’s apocalypse, and even then she had outclassed the vast majority of their forces by a wide margin. She had also never really cared about the fate of the world, aside from as a place where she ruled.

Out of all the Slayers in the Council, Illyria got on best with Faith. Faith accepted that Illyria was “weird”, whereas the other girls made it clear that they did not appreciate her different point of view or statements about how the world used to be, and that it was only because she had Faith and Wesley vouching for her that she had not been slayed – Lorne also vouched for her, but as he was a demon, and visibly so, his word mattered less. And also, Faith had, in her own words, “mad respect” for Wesley, which meant that Illyria was already disposed to like her. Faith and her leader – Buffy – were still slightly uneasy with each other, but they understood each other on a different level to the others, and she suspected that part of Buffy’s uneasiness was that she was suspicious that Faith would make a power grab for her position and stab her in the back, which made her more sensible than most, Illyria thought, and corresponded well with what her experience of how leaders and second-in-commands should be. But Faith seemed hurt, somehow, that she wasn’t completely trusted. Illyria had nothing to say to comfort her, but was happy to let her have an outlet for her frustration trying to beat Illyria up. It was endearing to see her try so hard, despite all her previous failures. Not even all the Slayers working together had managed to take her down, although it had been close, and had she not had her time manipulation powers, she thought the outcome might have been different. Luckily, though, she did have her powers back, and so far there had been no signs of “glitching”.

Wesley fit in well at the Watcher’s Council. He found a position for himself, as advisor and guide to all, one who could go out and deal with a vampire nest or demon infestation, who knew the lore and could identify demons by their patterns of behaviour and their looks, who knew prophecies and old tales, much of which had been lost in the destruction of the old Council house in London. He was valued.

He made fast friends with Robin, Faith’s lover. Robin’s mother had once been one of the Slayer girls, and so they had both grown up in the Council – had even met once, as boys, although it was many years ago and they had not spoken to each other in the interim. They knew of the same people, had read the same books, had many shared experiences and jokes that only the two of them understood. Illyria had to fight the instinct to knock Robin into a wall several times, when she came to speak to Wesley in his office or in the library, and found Robin already there, or when she wanted to go out to find demons to prey on, and Wesley had already promised Faith and Robin he would join them. Illyria joined the group, on those occasions; she was not about to give up the chance to show the humans what she was capable of and she did enjoy a good fight, but she seethed quietly whenever it happened. She had to remind herself that this was why she had wanted to join the Council: that she had wanted to give Wesley human company, and he did feel more at ease – less paranoid, less jittery, less adrift – than he had on the road. She just hadn’t realized that that meant he wouldn’t spend as much time with _her_ , and she resented every human who made a demand on the time he could have devoted to Illyria.

They spent many an evening in Lorne’s new bar where people sang for him to gain admittance. Apparently he’d had one before he joined Angel, and this was his attempt to go back to who he had been before everything. Lorne was still reeling from what he had done to their temporarily allied enemy Lindsey.

“Do you know what bothered him the most, when I shot him?” he said, one night when they were as the humans called it “deep in their cups”. “He couldn’t get over that Angel had a lackey shoot him. That he didn’t at least betray him himself. That was what bothered him – not the betrayal, but that it was me.”

“He thought you were not a worthy foe,” Illyria said.

“That’s right. That’s exactly what he thought. That I was unworthy.”

“Then he was a fool. The very fact that you managed to kill him makes you by definition a worthy foe.”

“That’s not how it works for humans,” Wesley said. “Anyone can kill anyone if they have a gun.”

“Then anyone can be a worthy foe.”

“But wouldn’t you be upset if one of the Slayers killed you?” Lorne asked. “Or not even a Slayer, what about that one-eyed human that hangs around with them? Alexander, or whatever his name is?”

“If I am so weak that a Slayer or their lackeys can kill me, then I deserve to be killed,” Illyria said.

“Wise words to keep in mind,” Wesley said, saluting her with his glass. He was not quite incoherent, but near enough. He’d started letting his guard down more, since they came to Cleveland, didn’t feel he had to be vigilant at all times. Illyria was not sure if it counted as an improvement. She’d hear Lorne say once that he had more issues than the back catalog of National Geographic. Lorne, Wesley, and Illyria – they were all as broken as each other. They drank whiskey, and cried – or Lorne and Wesley did. She did not feel any such need, although Wesley told her it was quite cathartic. She could get her catharsis in more dignified ways. Afterwards, they felt lighter – Illyria included.

*

One of their missions required going into an office building in the centre of town in broad daylight without being noticed, which required them to blend in. Illyria was not sure why she and Wesley had been chosen to go along on this mission, but apparently they needed firepower, and they knew that Illyria could alter her form at will.

“Just look human,” Faith told her. “You can do that, right?”

Illyria knew one human form that would not stick out among other humans, and it was one she had promised not to take on. She looked at Wesley, saw his eyes tight with pain and grief, but he nodded, so she assumed the unassuming form of Winifred Burkle.

“That’s sweet,” Faith’s boyfriend and Watcher Robin said. “You look so harmless, you’d never think this appearance hid… well, _you_.”

“That’s the point,” Wesley said, looking anywhere but at her. She did not like it at all. It had been months, and a great deal had happened in those months. They had traveled all over the continent, staying in many cheap motels, seen the landscape change around them, and fought many demons and vampires together. Why was the memory of Fred still painful? Their relationship had moved on from its rocky beginning, and now there were times that Illyria thought Wesley enjoyed her company for its own sake, and appreciated her for who she was. But still, the memory of Fred was a chasm between them.

She approached Faith privately after they had slayed the demons and cleaned the demon entrails off themselves.

“Wesley will not look at me when I wear the form of Fred Burkle,” she said. “It is interfering with both his and my effectiveness in battle, and that is unacceptable.”

Faith had only met Fred once, immediately after her escape from jail and when Angel had apparently “gone off the deep end”, although in his case it had something to do with the soul he had always been blathering on about, and Faith had done that thing she had talked to Illyria about, reigned him in when he was out of control. But, since they had only met once, briefly, under a high-stress situation that was not ideal to form close bonds, Faith had a generally positive impression of Fred, but did not actually mourn her deeply. She was the logical choice to approach with this conundrum. Usually when she had questions about humans she approached Wesley, or failing that, Lorne, but they were too emotionally affected by her appearance to be of help in this issue.

Faith looked amused.

“Effectiveness in battle, is it? Well, you can look any way you like, can’t you?”

“That is correct. Within the constraints of this form.”

“So what you need is a way to look human that’s not Fred. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I do not know what other humans consider acceptable.”

“Who does?” Faith shrugged.

“I have been told that my appearance is strange and off-putting, but many humans wear armor made from animal skins and paint their faces. Why is it not acceptable when I do it?”

“That’s leather and make-up. We can work with that. I’ll get some girls together, ones with a sense of style, who won’t try to make you into something you’re not and are cool with the whole Old One shtick, and we can figure out something that works for you.”

There were two girls aside from Faith who were deemed worthy to aid her in this endeavor, and who showed up to Illyria’s sparse room in the Council living quarters to hold a “make-over party”. There was also the leader, Buffy, who was apparently on a visitation and hadn’t been given an official invite by Faith, but had invited herself. She was the leader, so Illyria supposed she had the right to survey anything that went on in her domain.

“I heard make-over party and I couldn’t not come,” she said.

Illyria had been feasted before, and had attended large festivities held in her honor. She would pick out the most worthy of her followers to be her offerings and consume them while the rest of them cheered and celebrated. This was… not that. It was actually rather enjoyable – they got her to be Fred without any make-up and then played around with different “looks” to bring out Illyria’s personality without standing out too obviously among humans.

In the end, they kept her hair, but instead of blue on her forehead, they painted the area around her eyes and blue, and added plenty of black lining around her eyes. She was clothed in leather, the armor made from animals skins favored by many demon-hunters.

“Leather’s good,” said Buffy, who favored it herself on occasion, although not quite as much as Faith. “It’s protective and makes you look strong and fierce, without being – whatever that is.” She looked with some slight distaste at Illyria’s current amour.

The end result was surprisingly decent, and she also practiced modifying her and Fred’s mannerisms to make a human portrayal that was both Illyria and Fred, and neither of them.

“I enjoyed this,” she said. “But I will keep my own look most of the time. I do not like pretending to be something I’m not.”

That was Wesley’s influence.

“Whatever works for you,” Faith said in approval.

Illyria felt anticipation for Wesley’s reaction, but she would not go showing off for the sake of it. A reason to show it would present itself soon enough.

The girls had come to accept her, at least some of them. Some of them would never be comfortable in the presence of demons, their Slayer instincts too strong, their human prejudices too ingrained, but there were some who not only did not go out of their way to avoid her, they sought her out, to spar with, to teach her human games (most of which were pointless with overly complex rules and objectives that made no sense, but some were actually enjoyable), or to watch human entertainment on the little box – Illyria enjoyed those evenings when they put on films of action and mocked the fighting scenes the best. Some girls threw popped corn at the box and would hold their hands up to slap together in the air whenever anyone made a particularly good comment, Illyria included. Partaking in these activities together apparently meant that they were friends. Illyria had never had friends before. She did whatever she did when she did not understand something. She went to Wesley.

“You and Robin are friends,” she said.

“Yes, we are,” he replied. “Why?”

“What does that mean? To be friends?”

“It means we enjoy spending time with each other. We like each other.”

“Will you stab him, too?” she asked. He looked pained for a moment, and the air around him grew thick with grief. She was sorry for reminding him of his pain.

“I hope not,” he said. “Things at Wolfram and Hart got… bad. I hope things never get that bad again.”

“But if they do, will you?” she pressed. Her need for understanding trumped his bad memories, at least this time.

“I suppose I will, yes,” he said, flatly. “If things get bad and I have no other choice.”

“But you will feel sorrow,” she asked, almost certain of the answer.

“Yes.”

“Is a friend someone you would feel sorrow for if you had to stab?” she asked.

“I suppose that’s not a bad definition, for people such as us.”

Illyria nodded. She thought she understood now.

“Are we friends?” she asked.

“I don’t have the power stab you,” he said, which was not an answer to her question, but the scent of grief grew stronger, and she detected a hint of worry and melancholy in it, which she supposed was.

“I would feel sorrow if I had to stab you,” she said, because humans couldn’t taste each other’s emotions the way she could, and thus needed the words said.

She told Faith the same thing – the Slayer looked amused and a bit perplexed since she lacked the context of Illyria’s conversation with Wesley, but she returned the sentiment, so that was good.

Life carried on. They went out and slayed demons and vampires, stopped apocalypses, and prevented the rise of evil in Cleveland.

“I never thought my life would involve this many demon entrails,” Wesley said, after another particularly messy battle.

“I thought you were brought up in the life,” Faith said, carrying a demon corpse with its stomach gutted open (the same demon whose entrails Wesley now wore, actually) onto a pile of other demons for disposal.

“Well, yes, but my strengths were always more towards the academic than practical. I thought I would be a research Watcher, until I was told I was to be given an active Slayer and shipped out to meet you the very next day. And now look at me.”

“I started you down a dark path,” Faith grinned at him.

He smirked in response.

“Shouldn’t I say that to you?”

Faith shrugged.

“Eh, let’s call it even. As I said, you rank among the better Watchers I’ve had.”

Illyria knew that Faith considered Wesley to have failed and betrayed her and had tortured him in response, but the entire exchange had been friendly and jovial. Whatever was between them, they had moved past it. Perhaps that meant that Wesley could one day move past what Illyria had done to him?

*

Illyria had gotten used to that the various Council locations had an active exchange and people visited each other frequently, and when she saw unknown men, women, and young girls around, she assumed they had the right to be there – in the beginning she had questioned everyone and fought those who did not give satisfactory answers, but they had come to an agreement that those who were escorted by persons she knew were off limits, unless they were especially suspicious. She was sorry for that agreement when she saw a man she recognized from Fred’s memories being escorted by a young girl.

“Do you know where Wesley is?” the girl asked Illyria, and she looked from the girl to Wesley’s father. “He’s not in his office.”

“I shall inform him that you are coming,” she said, because Wesley had taught her better than to attack humans on sight, no matter how much you disliked the person. She stopped time for a brief moment, so they would not follow her, and stalked to the library where one could usually find Wesley when he wasn’t in his office.

“Your father is here,” she told him.

“He is? Why? I mean, well. I suppose it’s Council business,” he was twitchy, and she could see him look around to see if they were alone, and whether the books he was reading would meet his father’s approval. “Where is he? How do you know?”

“I met him. They were looking for you. I thought to inform you, so you could prepare.”

He stopped twitching and looked at her. He was surprised, and touched, and there was something else he was feeling that she couldn’t identify.

“Thank you, Illyria. That was thoughtful of you.”

“I knew his presence would bother you.”

“Yes, I can’t really say I’m looking forward to seeing him again.”

“When he becomes unbearable, you can cherish the memory of shooting him.”

“That doesn’t make it better. In fact, it makes it worse.”

That was as far as they got before the girl and the old man came in on them.

“Hello, Father,” Wesley said.

“Wesley,” the old man nodded. He did not acknowledge Illyria, who was standing next to and just in front of Wesley. He didn’t need her protection, but he had it, all the same. “I see you’ve finally come to your senses and abandoned your ‘rogue demon hunter’ game in favor of adult pursuits.”

“Yes, I’m back with the Council, as you can see.”

“I always did expect you to come crawling back, tail between your legs. I didn’t expect it to be after you’d worked with the forces of evil to unleash an apocalypse.”

“We stopped the apocalypse.”

“No thanks to you. Well, now you’ve just got to work your way up to having a Slayer of your own rather than being a general dogsbody, and perhaps you can finally redeem yourself and wash out the stain to our name after the hash you made of it last time.”

That would not do. Illyria felt rage surge through her body, and she picked Wesley’s father up by the throat and shook him.

“How dare you speak to Wesley that way?” she asked. “He gave his life to stop the Apocalypse, and you should hail him as a hero.”

Wesley’s father gasped for breath and clawed frantically at her arm with all his strength. It tickled slightly.

“Illyria,” Wesley said, putting all the disapproval she felt radiating off him in his tone. Ha. She did not need to taste his emotions to know what he was feeling – she could tell by the way he moved his body and the tone of his voice. She could tell how much he longed for his father’s approval, and how little he thought he would get it. She could tell how small his father made him feel, and she hated his father for it. She almost squeezed a little tighter, fully constricting his father’s airways, but she could also feel that despite everything between them – despite his father’s coldness, his eternal disapproval, despite the fact that Wesley would kill his father if he needed to and his father did not know that – she could feel that Wesley still loved his father.

She would not take another of his loved ones from Wesley.

She put the old man down.

“I was offered the chance to be the dedicated Watcher to a Slayer, but I turned it down.”

“Whatever for? If they offered you one? Why on Earth would you let that chance pass you by, boy?”

“I feel my talents are best used by doing general research and helping out several Slayers – the awakening of all the Potentials changed our reality, after all, and we must adapt to the times.”

Wesley’s father was full of derision and contempt.

“I don’t think much of what it says about their standards, offering you a Slayer right off the bat,” he said. “The Council certainly has gone downhill since Giles took over.”

“Giles and Buffy,” Wesley corrected.

“My point exactly. And letting God knows what in. Angels and demons – we’re supposed to fight them, not invite them into our innermost sanctum and offer them tea.”

He gave Illyria a disdainful look.

“Like this one. What are you meant to be?”

Illyria took one step closer to him – it was a shame her new form was so short, because she was used to towering over the vermin that would try to oppose her. But even in this form, she could be intimidating, and she let a hint of her true power shine through as she answered him.

“I am Illyria, God-King of the Primordium, one of the original owners of this world you have infested.” He blanched. Clearly, he had heard of her. But not of her return to the world. Wesley had kept that from his father. Interesting. “Your son is my guide and I am his protector, and I have decided that you are not fit to lick the dirt off his boots. Your death would cause Wesley pain, and that is the only reason I refrain from snapping your spine and pulverizing your innards, for nothing would cause me greater pleasure.”

“Please don’t,” Wesley said mildly. “He is my father, after all. Fathers and sons can be… complicated.”

She turned to look at Wesley.

“Since you request it, I will not.” She turned back to the old man. “But you should have more care in how you speak to your son.”

The old man swallowed, and for the rest of the visit, he was almost polite. He stayed for one day, got the information he was looking for, and left, giving Wesley no more trouble. That was good.

“I wish I could have met your pops,” Faith said, sinking down into one of the soft leather armchairs in the library after he had left. “Shame he didn’t stay for longer. Would have been interesting to see the kind of people you come from. Is his stick as firmly wedged up his ass as yours was when we first met?”

“Even more so,” Wesley said, and she snorted. “But perhaps it’s for the best that you didn’t meet. I can’t imagine he’d have anything good to say to you.”

“Why, are you ashamed of me?” Faith asked. She sounded joking, but she tasted of uncertainty and hurt.

“Ashamed of him,” Wesley said, and Faith relaxed slightly. “And ashamed of who I am when I’m around him.”

“You have no cause for shame,” Illyria said. “He lacks honor.”

“If there’s anything he has, it’s honor,” Wesley said, sounding and feeling dejected. “I’m the one who dishonors him.”

“He is weak,” Illyria said. “You are stronger and braver than he, and you have more honor and compassion, all the things you have told me are good, you have more than he. You are a better man than he.”

“You mean that,” Wesley said, slowly. “You’ve thought about what makes a good man, and you’ve decided that I am one.”

“I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean,” Illyria said, feeling a bit peeved.

“I know that,” Wesley said. He seemed to look at her with something new in his eyes, almost like wonder.

*

“Come on, let’s go out,” Faith said one night, “we never do anything just for fun.”

“I find great enjoyment in stepping on those unworthy of me,” Illyria said, and Faith made a face at her.

“Yeah, but it’s not the same. Wes, you in?”

“If you’re suggesting going to a crowded night club with lots of sweaty people dancing to music so loud it deafens you, I think I shall pass,” he said, and Illyria agreed, that did not sound like a good time.

“Nah, I’m in the mood for a more quiet night out. We’ll go to a nice bar, have some drinks, play some pool or darts or whatever they’ve got. I’ll give Illyria a chance to try out her new human form.”

Wesley looked up sharply.

“You have a new human form?” he asked.

“It bothers you, when I look like Fred,” she said. “But my normal form does not blend in.”

She assumed the form they had painstakingly worked out for her, with its blue hair and eyes and leather outfit.

Wesley swallowed, and a confusing mix of emotions came rolling off him in waves. She picked up grief, as expected, by also thankfulness, and surprise, and relief, and something else.

“It suits you,” he said.

“Everything suits me,” Illyria replied, although secretly she was glad. His opinion mattered a great deal, and she was not sure what she would have done if he had not approved of her.

They had a good time, she and Wesley, and Faith and her lover Robin. Illyria beat Robin in a game called billiards, which involved hitting little balls with a stick. Robin was good, but he was only human, and had nothing on her demon reflexes and accuracy – at least, once she’d learned to calibrate the force with which she kit the balls. On her first attempts, they jumped up and off the green table, which was embarrassing, but caused Wesley some amusement, so she didn’t feel the need to destroy the table.

They also played a game of throwing little darts at a target, which they were all very skilled at – the stationary target was easier to hit than many demons. They even drew a crowd of other admiring patrons, and Robin made bets with them as Illyria and Faith managed increasingly difficult feats of accuracy and skills.

As they left the bar, he split the profits with them, and Illyria knew enough about the value of the humans’ paper money to know that this was a fairly decent sum – enough to cover a motel for a night, perhaps even two.

“And we didn’t have to hustle anyone for it. Just pure skill,” Faith said, holding up her hand to Illyria for a “high five” – the human ritual of friendship. Illyria acquiesced and completed the ritual. “Did you have fun, Wes? I know I don’t have to bother asking you,” she said to Robin, where they were curled up together, she practically draped over him. Illyria wondered how they managed to walk, all tangled up like that.

“Yes, I did,” Wesley said, sincerely. He smiled widely, and it was, she though, the first time she had seen a genuine smile on his face, out of pure joy. It made him look ridiculous: his face was all out of proportion, with his mouth taking up half of it, showing off his teeth and scrunching up his face. It was very endearing.

He was not drunk, but the alcohol had had an impact on him. His emotional state could best be described as merry. She was glad that he was not using whiskey to numb his pain any more, but was finding joy in the company of friends, and only using alcohol to nudge him on the way to that state.

“And we didn’t even get into a single bar brawl,” Faith said, feeling both pleased and slightly disappointed at the same time.

“I’m proud of you, babe,” said Robin, and squeezed his arm around her more tightly. The group staggered home to the Council building in the small hours of the morning.

The next day Robin and Wesley both had hangovers, but Illyria and Faith felt fine. It was perhaps unwise of them to render themselves in less than optimal condition, although Illyria knew that humans apparently needed short periods to “wind down” to maintain their optimal condition over long periods of time, but over the course of the day, Robin and Wesley’s headaches faded, and although they were tired, they continued their work almost as normal, and by the day after, it was as if it had never happened.

So it was not the fault of alcohol when Wesley got knocked out in their next fight, in yet another basement. As soon as the demons were slayed, she ran over to him – wondering if she needed to bring him back again, and if so, if she was going to get Willow here in time, but as she held him, his eyes blinked open, and a slow smile stole across his face. Her heart tightened, for this had happened before. She didn’t think she was ready to see the smile fade as he realized it wasn’t Fred holding him. Not again.

But the smile didn’t fade.

“Illyria,” he said, softly and warmly. Illyria held him, and smiled back at him.

*

The anniversary of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart’s failed apocalypse passed in quiet remembrance. Illyria herself had been in the world for one year and four months. Many things were still strange to her. She still missed Angel and Gunn.

*

When Wesley was feeling down, she took him to the roof again, to show him that the world was not such a small place, that it contained greatness. How humanity endured, despite it all. He looked out over the blinking lights of Cleveland and said very little. There was a new feeling coming off of him, a warmth and fondness. Desire. Did he love her? He had said that to her exactly once, had told her that he loved her, but he hadn’t actually said it to her. He’d said it to Fred, and she’d replied as Fred, and then he’d died. He’d always known the difference between her and Fred. This was not transference of his feelings for Fred – if he felt warmth and fondness and desire for her, he felt it for _her_.

She carried the knowledge around in her – it pleased her to think about, and she felt happier than she had since her return to this world, perhaps happier than she even had been as a God-King: she had felt power, satisfaction, glee, and triumph as a God-King, but not this inner joy, this secret happiness that warmed her from within – that Wesley cared for her, perhaps loved her. Her joy took expression in increasingly violent ends for her foes, and she reveled in the way she and Wesley together cut a swath through any demon foolish enough to threaten the city they had chosen to protect.

He wasn’t going to act on any feelings, she knew, and so it was up to her. She knew he was a private person, and she also didn’t want to make this a display for others, so it would need to be in private. She felt he was most likely to respond to reason, but she sometimes struggled putting things in such a way that it did not come off wrong to humans, who were more squeamish than her. No doubt there would be some moral quandaries about whether a relationship with her was the right and moral choice – as if feelings obeyed morality. She hatched many a plan of how she was going to approach him, but something held her back from acting on any of them – it wasn’t fear of rejection, exactly, for Illyria feared nothing, but wisdom that it needed to be done with finesse and grace.

What actually happened was that they were walking home from taking out a nest of vampire, clothes and hair covered with dust, Wesley bleeding from a cut in his forehead, right above his nose, when she couldn’t contain herself any longer. She grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him up against the wall of a nearby shop-front window, and kissed him. He responded hungrily, his hands on her hips. She was driven in something in Fred’s memories, and something in her body to do it, and it was exciting and exhilarating. It gave her an adrenaline rush unlike she had felt before, as human or demon, like fighting, but more intense.

The next day, Wesley avoided her. She shouldn’t feel hurt, but his rejection still stung. She wanted to be loved, worshiped, adored, just like any other God-King, and the fact that he didn’t want to speak about what had happened, didn’t seem to want to see her, well, it made her feel terrible. She did not like feeling terrible.

She cornered him in his office.

“You have been avoiding me,” she said.

“I have.”

“I did not think you were the kind to avoid what is difficult.”

“I’m not.”

“And yet you’re avoiding me.”

“I apologize.” He met her eyes square on. “What we did yesterday… it was a mistake.”

“It was not. I can smell your desire on you. You want me.”

“I shouldn’t.”

He didn’t say why, and Illyria was grateful.

“But you do.”

“Yes.” His eyes shifted away from hers for a brief second, before she could smell determination coming off him, and he met her gaze once again.

“Then don’t deny yourself.”

She took a step forward, pausing to see if he would stop her. When he did not, she pushed up into his space and captured his mouth in hers. He surrendered into the kiss.

The day after that, it was he who sought her out.

They did not advertise their change in relationship status, but the people they worked with were very observant – and they were on the lookout for behavioural changes in each other, in case of infiltration by doppelgangers.

“So, you and Wesley, eh?” Faith asked one night, when they were “hanging out” in Faith’s room. Apparently, this was something that friends did. She and Faith were friends. This pleased Illyria.

“Yes,” she said. “Wesley and I. He makes me happy.”

Faith’s eyes softened, and her suggestive smirk turned into a genuine smile.

“Good for you,” she said. “And good for him. Homeboy needs someone to keep his ass in line.”

“I keep his ass in a very straight line,” Illyria said. She wasn’t quite sure what exactly Faith meant, but she presumed it meant something like “protect him and make sure he doesn’t get himself in trouble”, which was what Illyria had been doing for over a year.

She was aware that she and Wesley perhaps had different expectations of what it meant to be lovers, and she was keen to have expectations laid out at the start to avoid misunderstandings.

“You will court me,” she informed Wesley, since he might not know that that was what he should do.

“Will I?” he asked, but he seemed amused, not irritated. He’d never had a problem with her dictating what he was and was not to do, like some men she had encountered on Earth. He knew who he was dealing with, and what she was, after all.

“Yes,” she said.

“What does demon courting look like?” he asked, displaying his intelligence in asking and not assuming. She had chosen her mate well.

“You bring me gifts,” she explained. “The head of a demon you have killed is an appropriate gift.”

“That sounds grim.”

“It is practical. It shows you have the necessary skills to defend me, our territory, and our offspring.”

He looked alarmed.

“Offspring?”

“Offspring is not necessary,” she allowed. She had never really thought about it, and from his nervousness, she wondered if he hadn’t either, or if he had, and didn’t want them.

“That’s maybe a discussion for later,” he said. “Also, it’s not that I don’t want to bring you a head of a demon, but you can defend yourself, probably better than I can. Why am I the one bringing you a demon head?”

“Because it is a traditional courting gift.”

“Humans normally give each other flowers and jewelry. It seems easier to get hold of.”

Flowers and jewelry? What good was that meant to be? Those were paltry gifts, showing that humans had no sense of grandeur or greatness.

She resigned herself to disappointment. But, not two days later, he presented her with a large box, practically vibrating with pride and excitement. He seemed almost boyish in his glee, in a way she had not seen from him before.

She opened the box cautiously. Inside, on a bed of newspaper to soak up the blood, was a large head, half again the size of hers. It was shriveled and yellow, with straight horns and five eyes. It was beautiful.

“Did you behead this demon for me?” she asked. “As a courting gift?”

“Yes,” he said proudly. “Well. I shot it first, then I took its head off. That seemed safer. Have I proved I can look after you, our territory, and any eventual offspring?”

In reply, she seized his mouth with a kiss.

It was now up to her – he had shown he would respect her traditions, so she needed to show that she would respect his. The problem was, she didn’t know where to start. Flowers and jewelry seemed like such useless, impractical gifts. She wondered what they were meant to symbolize – if she knew what she was supposed to be telling Wesley, it would be easier to pick a type of flowers and jewelry that would convey the message. Faith and the other Slayers told her it had no meaning, that flowers were pretty and jewelry was precious and sometimes expensive, and that that was the point of the gift. To give your loved one something pretty and precious to admire. It seemed silly to Illyria, because what good did admiring something do? She didn’t think Wesley enjoyed ornamentation for the sake of ornamentation. But he had still asked her for flowers and jewelry. It was Willow who gave her the idea, when she came to visit Cleveland. Illyria had sensed the pouch of protective herbs she wore around her neck before, and not paid it any mind, since none of the herbs would interfere with her effectiveness or impede her ability to take Willow down if it came to a fight between them, but she realized when she saw it that not all flowers needed to be useless.

She got him a simple gold chain with a set of three glyphs in gold dangling off it, which when worn would heighten his senses and make him more aware of his surroundings, and she got him a potted aconite, which could be used in potions and salves, both to heal and to poison. Besides, she had been told it was pretty when it flowered, with deep purple flowers clustered at the top of the stems. She didn't know what good it would do that it was pretty, but apparently that mattered to humans, and since Wesley had gone to the effort of following her courting rituals, she felt she should respect and follow his. So she got him pretty flowers and jewelry. But pretty did not have to mean useless.

“I have obtained flowers and jewelry for you,” she said, and presented him with the chain and the flowerpot. “I hope this fulfills your courtship rituals.”

He smelt of joy, devotion, gratitude, and wonder. How could such small things inspire such a mix of strong feelings?

“Yes, they do. Thank you. This was a very thoughtful gift,” he said. If she hadn't been able to sense his feelings, she might have been disappointed in his response, bu Wesley had never been one for overwrought displays of affectation.

“The plant and jewelry have uses,” she said, eager for him to know that it was not just ornamental. She wanted him to appreciate the thought she had put into the gift.

“Yes,” he said, smiling broadly. “They’re perfect. Thank you, Illyria. Really.”

She was satisfied.

Wesley had always known the difference between her and Fred, and had been very clear on wanting to maintain that distinction (except once, more than a year ago, when he was dying – it was not a memory she was keen to revisit), but still she couldn’t help but worry.

“Do you love me because I look like Fred?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “I love you despite it.”

*

She had not worried that Wesley would become overprotective, now that they were lovers and not just friends. Some of her Slayer friends told of that happening with their lovers, and that human males had an unfortunate tendency to view females of the species as inferior, but thankfully, Wesley was not one of them. He probably knew that she was far more capable than he, and could probably guess her likely reaction should he suggest it. She was thankful she wouldn’t have to beat Wesley up to prove her capability.

Instead, he took her to demon fights and let her loose on their joint enemies, he encouraged her and fought beside her, much like they had before. There was one new element, however, which took its expression at the end of a fight, when he was absolutely covered in blood and demon entrails, looking incredibly attractive. He was strong, sweaty, panting slightly from the exertion, sword in one hand, still coated with the blood of his enemies – what was there not to like?

“You look good like that,” she told him. “Both handsome and fearsome.”

He wiped some goo off his forehead and gave her a once over. She was just as messed up as he was – if not more so.

“It’s strangely reciprocated,” he said. “I never thought I’d find goo sexy.”

“The goo symbolizes strength.”

“Yes, that must be it.”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her in for an intense kiss.

*

“The world really is quite beautiful,” Wesley said on their favorite rooftop again. He smelled of contentment and calm.

“Are you glad I brought you back?” she asked. She suspected the answer, but she also wasn’t sure if he knew it. If he had to think about it, then

“Yes. Yes, I think I am, rather,” he said.

They stood on their favorite rooftop, hand in hand, watching the sun rise over the world of the humans.


End file.
